Bitch Factor (24 page)

“Of course he’s
enjoying
it. It’s damn good.” In fact, her untrained palate found it better than what she’d eaten earlier at the famed Garden Cafe.

“So,” Dann said. “Going to fill me in on your day?”

Dixie licked her fingers and headed for the hall closet where she kept supplies.

“Not much to tell.”

He followed her, Mud padding alongside. After a moment of silence, while Dixie unlocked the supplies closet, Dann cleared his throat.

“I know you’re not obligated,” he said. “Only I’m sitting here with my stomach in knots wondering when the firing squad’s going to show up.”

Dixie opened the closet door. She could think of no reason
to keep Dann uninformed. He’d be less antsy if he thought they were gaining ground.

“I talked to Homicide about getting a look at the police report” Quickly assessing the closet’s contents, she selected a UHF transmitter, about the size of a cigarette pack, and a receiver. Between the two, she could listen to sounds and conversations in Valdez’s home from as far away as a mile. “The investigating officers didn’t find any evidence your car was stolen, but that doesn’t rule it out. They did note your claim of a spare key hidden under the frame and the fact that no key was found.”

She painted in the details of her day, making it sound more fruitful than it really was, relating her meetings with the Paynes and her phone call to Elbe’s real father, Jonathan Keyes.

“Tomorrow I’ll stop by Keyes’ office.”

“If he’s a reputable businessman, an architect, what makes you think he’s involved in car theft?”

“I don’t.” Dixie invariably found it easier to do a thing than talk about it. Explaining her abstract method of reasoning out a problem had never come easy, even as an ADA working with an investigative team. But Dann’s question deserved answering. While she considered it, Dixie selected a telephone tap and digitizer, for transmitting phone conversations to a recorder outside the Valdez house. She packed the equipment into a battered metal toolbox with shock-resistant foam padding.

On a shelf beside the toolbox sat her camera.

“Ever take any travel photos?” One of her law professors had told her that every complicated idea could be explained with a simple analogy.

“Snapshots,” Dann said, shrugging it off. “Can’t say I’ve ever done anything as good as that Yucatán shot in your album.”

Dixie stiffened. “You looked through my scrapbooks?”

He blinked, his mouth tightening. “I didn’t see a KEEP OUT sign.”

“And I didn’t realize I’d have to mark ’hands off on all my personal belongings.”

“Okay, so I had an acute case of indiscretion.” His voice was low and measured. “There’s not a hell of a lot to do around this place.”

“Tomorrow I’ll buy some fence stain. You’ll have plenty to do.”

“Fine.”

Mud, sensing the discord, nosed between them.

Dixie glanced past Dann to the kitchen, which he’d obviously cleaned and polished before cooking the dinner she refused to eat. She knew he was cozying up, hoping she’d start trusting him and let down her guard. But, hell, there was nothing secret in the house: nothing dangerous, except ammunition, which she kept in a locked cabinet, and guns, which she carried with her. And her badass-bitch routine didn’t play comfortably in her own home. A long breath seeped out between her teeth.

“Sorry,” she said. “Being a recluse breeds suspicion. I’m not used to having visitors.” She turned back to the shelves, added a VHF beeper for Valdez’s car and a canister of CS tear gas to the other equipment in the toolbox. She could feel Dann watching her.

“What’re you going to do with all that?”

“A side job, in payment for looking at the Keyes file.” Most of the stuff she wouldn’t need. Like the shiv in her boot, it was merely insurance. She started to shut the closet, then saw the Pentax and realized she’d never finished answering Dann’s question about why she wanted to talk to Jonathan Keyes. She picked up the camera.

“When I travel, I like to capture the sense of a place in six or eight shots… buildings, boats, cars, parks and beaches where people gather, close-ups of local people
doing
things, items that represent the culture—food, jewelry, clothing, whatever makes the area unique. When I’m finished, I know the place I’m visiting as well as my own yard. The photographs paint the entire experience.” Dixie set the camera back on the shelf. “I approach an investigation the same way,
which is what I was doing this morning. Trying to capture a true picture of Betsy Keyes and what happened the day she died. Jonathan Keyes is part of the picture. I need to know where he fits in.” Dixie locked the closet and moved into the den.

“Makes sense, I guess.”

She triggered a hidden electronic lock and opened a spring-mounted bookcase to reveal a row of narrow shelves. One shelf held stacks of gun shells. She removed a box of .45s for the semiautomatic and a box of double-aught buckshot for the combat shotgun.

She felt Dann’s interest perk right up at the sight of the ammunition. Not much use to him without guns, even if he managed to break the electronic code—unless he was as handy at making bombs as he was at making Chicken Piccata. With a mental shrug, Dixie relocked the cabinet. Trust was a useful measuring tool at times, but she’d remember to check later for tampering.

In the kitchen, she took a photographer’s vest from the coat closet. The vest’s custom lining would stop a 270-grain shell from a .357 Magnum. Several of the vest’s fourteen pockets contained items she occasionally found useful—sandwich bags, tape, putty, wire, a glass cutter, a Lock-Aid tool for instantly opening any lock except high security, a pair of binoculars.

Dann held a pocket flap open while she inserted the cartridges.

“This side job looks serious,” he commented quietly. “Should I be worried about you?”

“Worried?” She looked up.

The top of her hair brushed his chin, and she found him studying her, eyes hooded and dark. A weighted silence hung between them. Dixie wasn’t used to having anyone worry about her. Except Amy.

Dann swallowed, as if his mouth had gone suddenly dry. She noticed a web of laugh lines that framed his eyes and thought he must laugh a lot during less stressful times. She
knew she should look away, but the concern that filled his gaze was very real. It was also strangely gratifying.

Kidnap victims often developed an emotional attachment to their captors, she’d read. Complete dependency on a person for food, shelter, human companionship, and approval created false endearment. Was that happening here? And if so, why was she feeling it, too?

An invisible cord seemed to draw them closer.

“What if something happens to you?” Dann said softly.

His voice had the rich sensuousness of dark velvet. She’d noticed it before; now it enveloped her like a plush, warm cloak. She liked the sound.

She also liked the strong line of his chin. And the way his brown hair waved over his ears.

Her chest felt suddenly tight, her breathing shallow. She zipped and unzipped a pocket flap. A strand of hair fell across her cheek.

He reached for it—

Mud’s jaws snapped over Dann’s wrist with the speed of a viper.

Be just his luck, Parker thought, Flannigan getting herself killed. Mud holding him prisoner out here in the boonies till they both starved to death. Parker’s arm still twitched when he thought about the damage Mud’s teeth could’ve done.

He ran hot water over pans and liquid soap in the bottom of the sink.

The dog was dedicated to Flannigan, no argument there. Maybe it was just plain dumb, thinking he could win the dog over and waltz out the gate. Likely get himself chewed to a bloody pulp. Mud, all grins and wags till you made a move toward his master. Must play hell with Flannigan’s love life.

Flannigan’s love life—
now why did that thought give him a start? Everybody had lovers. Woman her age, her looks. He tried to picture the kind of man she’d fall for. Lawyer type, probably. Or cop. Maybe that homicide cop who’d given her information on Parker’s case. Traded information, Flannigan said. She does a side job, cop gives her a peek at the file. What kind of boyfriend would put a woman in danger? What the hell kind of a job, anyway, required a whole box of bullets and those electronic gadgets? Were they even legal?

Bounty hunters were known to straddle legalities when it suited them. Be worth a chuckle, discovering Flannigan
fenced stolen art or ran a smuggling ring on the side. See her get busted. Some eager young cop locking Flannigan in handcuffs, throwing her in the slammer.

Jail was a bleak damn place. Wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

He loaded the dishwasher, then picked up the piccata pan from the floor, where Mud had licked it clean.

“And you!” Mud sat up, his ears twitched straight ahead. “Some friend you turned out to be. Could’ve broken my arm, grabbing it like that. I wasn’t going to hurt her. I was just thinking—”

Hell, what
had
he been thinking? Turn on the charm, get her feeling all mushy, maybe talk her into letting him go? He’d bet Flannigan’d never been mushy about a guy in her whole damn life, even as a scrawny teenager.

He appreciated her poking around for some evidence to clear him. Parker didn’t read her as a do-gooder, either, just a helluva strong woman with a passion to see justice win out. “The first thing we do,” Shakespeare wrote, “let’s kill all the lawyers.” Good idea, but maybe he’d have made an exception with Flannigan.

Halfway through his trial, Parker had lost faith in justice. Which was why he’d skipped, why he was even now working on a backup plan.

What happened earlier, though, with Flannigan, wasn’t part of any plan. Her standing there, all soft curves and perfect face, not much more than a handful but with her tough-bitch veneer. Parker wondered what she’d have done if he kissed her. He looked down at Mud.

“Some friend.”

The dog yawned and gave Parker his “Who, me?” look.

Scrubbing a spot of burned crust on the broiler pan, Parker recalled watching Flannigan drive away in the gray van. The guns worried him. Useless, though, worrying about something you couldn’t fix.

Pans. He could fix pans. And food. Cooking took his mind off the shit he could do nothing about. Like an artist with a painting, get your mind wrapped around creating a meal,
then sit down and eat it—double the pleasure. Better yet, share the meal with somebody. Couldn’t eat a painting.

He’d had a chuckle looking at Flannigan’s scrapbooks. Pictures of her growing up, her older sister, Amy, and the old folks. Nice life. Sometimes he wondered why he’d never settled down. Pretty wife, big shady yard, maybe a kid or two. A dog like Mud.

Crazy name for a dog, but there it was, right on his tag: MEAN UGLY DOG. MUD in parentheses. Flannigan had a sense of humor. Parker hadn’t seen much of it, but it was there. Her mother must’ve had one, too, naming a daughter Desiree Alexandra. Found that in one of the albums, a spelling bee award from school. No damn wonder she called herself Dixie, with such a girly name to live down. Desiree Alexandra. Sounded like something from
Gone With the Wind
.

Parker stacked the clean pots and emptied the sink. Be dark soon. He hoped Flannigan wasn’t getting herself into something dangerous.

He opened the pantry and took out the red Frisbee.

“Come on, Mud. Let’s see how close I can get to the barn, and the cars inside the barn, before you turn mean.”

The Valdez house, faded yellow with black shutters, sat close to the street, flower beds overgrown with weeds, yellowed newspapers piled on the porch, oil stains spotting the cracked concrete driveway. Hermie Valdez’s twelve-year-old Toyota was parked in the open garage. There was no other car in sight.

Dixie cruised past, looking for obvious signs of occupancy. Before leaving home she’d called Rashly. Hermie hadn’t yet been released, so the house should be empty.

In its heyday, the early seventies, the southwest neighborhood had rocked with disco parties every night, swinging singles riding the fast track to corporate management. Now it was being ethnicized by Hispanics, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and East Indians, with and without green cards, with and without drug and alcohol habits. On early mornings, men lined the street, waiting for the day labor truck to drive by, wondering if they’d be selected for work.

In place of the Mustang—a former police car that would likely attract attention in this neighborhood—Dixie was driving the gray van. It now sported a magnetic sign that said DOVER PLUMBING. She backed into the driveway behind the Toyota, parking nose out, then climbed down lazily from the
cab. As she opened the truck’s side panel to get her “plumber’s” tools, she scanned the neighboring yards.

The van blocked the view from the street Hermie’s house stood between Dixie and the neighbors on the west. The house on the east side appeared dead empty. But Dixie felt someone’s eyes on her. She hoped her blue overall with the Dover name patch looked convincing. Beneath it she wore the bulletproof vest and her sister-visiting clothes; she looked thirty pounds heavier. Fortunately, it was a cold night.

From the battered toolbox, she slid the Lock-Aid tool into her pocket and palmed the directional beeper, slapping the back of it with putty. She picked up the toolbox, closed the truck, and strode purposefully to the back door of the house. With luck she could be in and out in less time than a plumber could replace a faucet washer. Passing the Toyota, she slipped the beeper into the curved lip of the tire well.

She knocked on the door. After a moment, she opened the screen door and knocked again, louder. When still no answer came, for which Dixie was entirely grateful, she pressed the Lock-Aid against the dead bolt, pulled the trigger, and listened until the bolt magically clicked back.

“Plumber, ma’am,” she called, as if someone had asked. She eased the door open. “Here to fix the leak.”